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Jimmy_Mike wrote:Saw Three Billboards on Friday. Big "meh" from me. Really loved In Bruges so my expectations were pretty high. As a resident of Missourah and native Southerner, it was hard to stomach the liberal use of my favorite British cuss word.

Music was good. Nice use of a Jim James/My Morning Jacket tune.

Carry on, cunts.

100% feeling what you're throwing down, JM. It's gonna go home with a tidy pile of awards too, and will be looked back on as fondly as Crash imho.

What's cool about it is the generally high production and fx value, which is a surprise when you go into it with basically a made-for-TV or straight-to-video mindset...which is what we do when it's this kind of Netflix original right? Without being snobby about such things (I friggin love flawed B-movie Sci Fi!) I enjoyed it and watched a second time (not as good...) It does have a bunch of cool ideas/scenes/images, which puts it right in line with the original Cloverfield in my book- marred by the same 'yeah but the characters are fucking annoying!'.

Fwiw...I put Cloverfield Lane way ahead of both tbh, as it was a really solid suspense thriller with INTERESTING characters/motivations, constantly shifting perspectives, surprising turns of events, but that just HAPPENED to turn into a science fiction film franchise-tie-in during the last reel. Which also worked for me. (I can see why it was problematic for others tho...)

Did you get at least some (if not quite a bit) of enjoyment out of Oblivion, Life, Alien: Covenant or (to a lesser extent) Passengers?

Then I'd say jump in!

If you hated most of those.....you can almost certainly afford to leave it alone. And just go re-watch Cherry 2000.

* When it comes to this genre, I pretty much agree with William Gibson (sorry, I've looked but can't find the exact quote): "Even the worst B-movie Sci-Fi has at least one cool/great idea. Even Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone with Molly Ringwald has one great idea which makes it worth watching!"

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- Mon Feb 12, 2018 11:05 am#102874
@scojo I like that quote! I’d develop it a little and say ‘any film is better than no film’. It pays to be open minded about film as a rule, there’s always something. After all, someone has loved the idea enough to pay for it to be made. And often, it’s usually in the making the best ideas get lost entirely(or become a total stroke of genius of course) . Bad performance, bad editing, director losing or winning a fight over a specific point. Actor getting hammered drunk every morning despite being a public teetotal, which means the director can’t really get a point across. I had a long chat with a producer before Christmas about modern editing cutting too fast for audiences, so where you once had a magical helicopter shot like the Shining opening, you would now just cut after a few seconds and bring the pace up, even though the footage was shot and all the money spent. You don’t get the lingering photography as much, even in films like Revenant where it’s all photography heavy. There’s a beautiful scene at the end of Wind River which is really what storytelling is about, very rare to do this style in this decade at least. And yet nobody’s seen the damn film. So even when the cream rises to the surface it’s possible nobody notices.

Anyway... Really enjoying altered carbon right now. My other half prefers it to bladerunner 2049. It moves very fast but the episode format does allow ideas to develop.

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maxlevel wrote:@scojo I like that quote! I’d develop it a little and say ‘any film is better than no film’. It pays to be open minded about film as a rule, there’s always something. After all, someone has loved the idea enough to pay for it to be made. And often, it’s usually in the making the best ideas get lost entirely(or become a total stroke of genius of course) . Bad performance, bad editing, director losing or winning a fight over a specific point. Actor getting hammered drunk every morning despite being a public teetotal, which means the director can’t really get a point across. I had a long chat with a producer before Christmas about modern editing cutting too fast for audiences, so where you once had a magical helicopter shot like the Shining opening, you would now just cut after a few seconds and bring the pace up, even though the footage was shot and all the money spent. You don’t get the lingering photography as much, even in films like Revenant where it’s all photography heavy. There’s a beautiful scene at the end of Wind River which is really what storytelling is about, very rare to do this style in this decade at least. And yet nobody’s seen the damn film. So even when the cream rises to the surface it’s possible nobody notices.

Anyway... Really enjoying altered carbon right now. My other half prefers it to bladerunner 2049. It moves very fast but the episode format does allow ideas to develop.